Written by: @cynthiaju333; Reviewed by: @NPC_Leo

In the past two months, a series of significant events occurred within the Ethereum ecosystem: the Ethereum Foundation (hereinafter referred to as EF) completed an organizational restructuring, Ethlabs was established as an independent non-profit R&D organization, Ethereum Institutional officially launched as an independent entity focused on institutional adoption, and Etherealize continued to promote Ethereum's narrative towards Wall Street and the capital markets. The community engaged in extensive discussions surrounding EF's organizational restructuring, the formation of new community-driven teams, initiatives geared towards institutional adoption, as well as R&D division and governance structure.

On April 21, 2026, ETH HK Hub officially opened in Hong Kong, where two significant dialogues took place. One was in Chinese between Vitalik Buterin and Hong Kong Legislative Council member Chu Tak-yi. They discussed the development of the Chinese-speaking community over the past twelve years, covering Layer 2, core protocol development, anti-quantum strategies, Layer 1 scaling, and the future directions that truly warrant builders' investment in Ethereum. The second dialogue was an English roundtable involving EF Chair Aya Miyaguchi, Council member Chu Tak-yi, and ecological fund partner QZ, focusing primarily on discussions around EF's role, subtraction philosophy, Walk-away Test, and Hong Kong's position within the Ethereum ecosystem.

Standing today, after more than two months, how can we gain a deeper understanding of the changes occurring within the entire Ethereum community? The dialogues between Vitalik and Aya provide us with important reflections and references: making it easier for us to understand that Ethereum is entering a new stage of development, a future with multiple community nodes and potential avenues for continued evolution.

What has happened in Ethereum over the past two months?

On May 24, Vitalik Buterin posted a long thread on X, publicly outlining his personal views on EF's future direction. He emphasized that EF will pursue “longevity over breadth”, reducing ETH sales and the Foundation's financial expenditures, and focusing more on core values CROPS (Censorship Resistance/Ownership, Open Source, Privacy, Security). He pointed out that EF is not the center of Ethereum, but rather “one node, with a defined purpose”, advocating for a pluralistic model where multiple focused nodes collaborate within the ecosystem.

On June 23, EF officially announced a new organizational structure on its official blog. The new structure includes protocol layer, access layer, user layer, community layer, and institutional layer, along with operational and management-related support structures. Through this reorganization, EF aims to align its organizational form closer to long-term strategic goals, ensuring the sustainable development of Ethereum in the future.

Almost simultaneously, the independent non-profit R&D organization Ethlabs announced its establishment, founded by five former senior researchers from EF: Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma, with funding support from Bitmine, Sharplink, Joe Lubin, SNZ, and others. Its goal is to prepare Ethereum for the next stage of institutional adoption, agentic finance, DeFi, stablecoins, and RWA, collaborating with EF to advance Ethereum protocol development across different domains and build a multi-node ecosystem.

On July 1, EF's Global Policy Strategy Team released a guide for governments and institutions: “Ethereum for Governments and Institutions: Why Neutral Infrastructure is Crucial Right Now”. This report actively assists global policymakers and large institutions in gaining a deeper understanding of Ethereum. Its core premise is: “Today’s world needs shared, neutral digital public infrastructure not controlled by any single centralized entity, and Ethereum is exactly the public, programmable network designed for this purpose.”

On the same day, Ethereum Institutional officially launched as an independent non-profit organization, positioning itself as the “dedicated institutional front door” for the Ethereum ecosystem, taking over the EF’s go-to-market team's institutional engagement efforts from the past year, with a clearer mission, broader geographical coverage, and long-term funding independence; key focus areas include institutional education and engagement, institutional insights, ETH and ecosystem marketing, standards and best practices, and institutional activities.

Meanwhile, Etherealize continues to promote the connection between Ethereum and traditional finance. Its website positions itself as “Rewiring Wall Street with Ethereum” (reshaping Wall Street with Ethereum), working on building financial infrastructure aimed at a multi-trillion dollar market for tokenization, Ethereum-native settlement, and institutional-grade privacy protection. Wall Street's interest in Ethereum is shifting from proof-of-concept and pilot projects to viewing the public chain as production infrastructure; discussions are expanding from stablecoins to tokenized stocks, bonds, real estate, and investment funds.

These events together point to a larger change: Ethereum is transitioning from a phase where a significant amount of coordination and public narrative is shouldered by the Ethereum Foundation EF, to a new phase where multiple specialized organizations share different capabilities. EF is increasingly focusing on protocol governance, trusted neutrality, self-sovereignty, and long-term resilience. Ethlabs will handle R&D for the next stage of adoption and infrastructure capacity building. Ethereum Institutional will take on institutional education, standard-setting, market awareness promotion, and entrance efforts for global financial institutions. Etherealize will continue to drive Ethereum into capital markets and traditional financial narratives.

These organizations do not belong to a single centralized plan and should not be simply understood as outsourcing or substitutes for EF. They collectively reflect that the Ethereum ecosystem is emerging with clearer division of capabilities: protocol neutrality, institutional adoption, capital market narratives, applied R&D, and local community coordination are being shared among different nodes.

More precisely, Ethereum is entering a new stage of development and ecological structure. If we revisit the discussions held at the ETH HK Hub on April 21, we can see that what Vitalik and Aya discussed that day were indeed the long-term principles behind the changes.

EF Chair Aya discusses subtraction organizational philosophy

In the roundtable at ETH HK Hub, Aya Miyaguchi repeatedly mentioned one concept: Walk-away Test.

She meant that the long-term goal of EF is not to become a larger, more controlling central organization, but rather to enable the entire system to continue operating even without EF.

She said:

“Ethereum must pass the Walk-away Test—i.e., the whole system must still function correctly even without the Ethereum Foundation.”

Aya recalled that when she joined EF, it was during the ICO boom. At that time, many suggested that the Foundation quickly expand, establishing positions such as CTO and CMO, to take on more centralized roles.

But EF did not do this.

She explained:

“If the Foundation builds everything for the ecosystem, participants will become reliant. In the long run, this undermines competition, and without competition, optimal solutions cannot emerge.”

This is based on Ethereum's fundamental belief: the health of the system does not stem from the strength of a single organization, but from whether the ecosystem can continuously produce new capabilities, new organizations, and new builders.

So when Aya says:

“Success means the Foundation does less, while Ethereum becomes stronger.”

This statement gained a more concrete context two months later.

From this perspective, Ethlabs, Ethereum Institutional, Etherealize, and the emergence of global Ethereum community hubs are more like an external manifestation of EF’s subtraction organizational philosophy: As the foundational protocol matures, the ecosystem no longer requires an all-encompassing command and control center but multiple organizations with shared beliefs, independent from each other, and each taking on different responsibilities.

Vitalik discusses the boundaries of protocol coordination

In the dialogue at ETH HK Hub, Vitalik also made a very crucial distinction today.

He said, “Core protocol development and L2 development are completely different difficulties. L2 is more like a free market. If an outsider makes something better, there’s a chance to win.”

But core protocols differ. Core protocol development requires long-term coordination with existing developers, needing to reach a consensus among client teams, researchers, the community, and upgrade pathways.

Therefore, the truly important question is: Does this work still serve Ethereum's long-term protocol goals, and does it still uphold essential attributes like trusted neutrality, security, privacy, censorship resistance, and Ethereum as a public infrastructure?

The most core work of Ethereum continues to be enabling a decentralized protocol to evolve continually through long-term coordination.

Why Hong Kong?

In Aya's roundtable, she mentioned, “The community Hub emerging in Hong Kong itself reflects a manifestation of EF’s subtraction philosophy.”

If the future of Ethereum is not driven by a single center but is jointly constructed by several independent nodes, then local Hubs are not just activity venues or community event organizers. They resemble a new form of ecological infrastructure.

They connect not only developers but also institutions, researchers, capital, policymakers, public goods builders, and new players entering Ethereum from traditional finance, AI, hardware, stablecoins, RWA, and payment sectors.

Hong Kong just happens to be at these intersection points. It is an international financial center and a place where the contexts of Eastern and Western capital, policies, and technologies converge; it connects Chinese-speaking builders with the global Ethereum community and is close to Shenzhen's hardware, AI, and manufacturing ecosystems.

Thus, as Ethereum Institutional expands globally to include Hong Kong and Singapore, with SNZ supporting Ethlabs, and ETH HK Hub becoming Asia's first physical Ethereum community center, all point towards a trend: Asia is becoming a crucial node for institutional adoption and builder coordination in Ethereum.

This is also the role that SNZ and ETH HK Hub hope to undertake. Our role is to establish a long-term coordination node in Hong Kong and Asia, allowing builders, researchers, institutions, capital, policymakers, and the global Ethereum community to meet here, transforming dialogues from various activities into long-term constructs.

Two months later, what has truly changed?

In the past two months, many have been asking: What happened to EF? Who left? Who started new organizations? Will Ethlabs replace EF? Does Ethereum Institutional mean Ethereum is starting to actively compete for the institutional market?

If we revisit the two dialogues from April 21, perhaps the answers will become clearer.

EF is becoming more focused on what it should truly protect: protocol neutrality, long-term security, openness, privacy, censorship resistance, and self-sovereignty. Meanwhile, more specialized organizations have emerged within the ecosystem, each taking on R&D, institutional adoption, capital market narratives, local community coordination, developer education, and policy communication.

EF doing less does not mean Ethereum is doing less. On the contrary, it requires more people, more organizations, more regions, and more builders to step up.

Perhaps the grand storyline over the past two months is that Ethereum continues to prove the things it has always believed:

A resilient ecosystem relies on the continual emergence of new nodes, new collaboration methods, and new builders.

The existence of ETH HK Hub is precisely to participate in such a future.

ETH HK Hub is jointly operated by SNZ and ETHTAO and supported by the Ethereum Foundation.

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